Cider Gum Eucalyptus Trees

Eucalyptus gunnii, Cider Gum Trees. 3-Litre Pot-Grown Plants

Cider Gum is a very fast-growing tree that can be hard pruned into a large shrub for its attractive, fragrant new foliage, which is blue-ish and glaucous: best beloved of flower arrangers. It is suitable for tall screening and windbreaks.

Left as a tree, it can grow to 15-30 metres, depending on location.

Browse all of our garden trees, or garden shrubs.

Features

• Evergreen, fragrant leaves.
• Blue-ish new foliage.
• Mainly coppiced / hard pruned as a large shrub.
• Tall screening, good for windbreak
• Max. Height as a tree 30m
• RHS Award of Garden Merit
• Year Round Delivery.

Growing Eucalyptus gunnii

Rated at H5 hardiness, it will grow in most locations in the UK that receive full sun and are sheltered. Tolerant of a range of soils and conditions, but is happiest in a fertile, neutral-acid soil.

If left to its own devices, it will quickly become a very large tree, so keep it hard-pruned as a shrub from the start, with a twice yearly trim.
This will promote new growth, carrying the loveliest immature leaves.
It coppices especially well (cut to a low stool), and could be pollarded as a lollipop with a little extra pruning (cut back to a trunk about 1.5-2 metres high).

In Your Garden Design

Handy for providing a tall screen, though make sure you keep on top of the annual pruning, so it doesn't run away with itself - it grows up to 2m a year in the right conditions. If you do decide to let it grow into a tree, it will reward you with lovely flaking bark in shades of grey, cream and pinkish brown. Kept coppiced, the rounded blueish green foliage provides a beautiful evergreen backdrop to the border, especially with blues, pinks and whites, or you could use it with coppiced willow and dogwoods for winter colour in a shrubbery. And you will always have plenty of fragrant greenery for your flower arrangements!

Did You Know?

A native of Tasmania, the cider gum is so called because it produces a sweet sap that the Aboriginal people ferment into an alcoholic drink. The fragrant leaves are filled with essential oils.

Eucalyptus gunnii is named for Ronald Campbell Gunn (1808–1881), North Tasmania's Superintendent of Convicts.